Limbo Lodge (11 page)

“That’s uncommonly kind of you, ma’am,” said Herodsfoot, standing his ground, “but I beg you won’t trouble yourself with entertaining me. I’m sure you wish to be with your daughter. And I shall do very well here with my companions.”

“Your compan—” She stared at him as if he had asked to be accommodated in the pigsty. “Most singular! You prefer to remain in the kitchen? Oh – very well – if that is your wish. The meal shall be brought to you here . . . in the course of time . . .”

And she swept severely away, without another word.

Herodsfoot gave Dido a rueful grin, pushing up his glasses. “Bless me, what a tartar! Lucky she’s not the one passing out vouchers for the Royal Garden Party at St James’s. We’d none of us be invited—Oh, may the foul fiend fly away with these glasses! Yorka, I’m afraid the earpiece has broken again—”

With a suppressed wail, as if this were the very last straw, Yorka received the broken spectacles from Herodsfoot and looked around her for mending materials. But nothing in the bare, cold kitchen seemed to strike her eye as being at all suitable. Shaking her head sorrowfully, she tucked the glasses into a little pouch containing seeds and grasses which she carried at her waist.

At this moment an elderly man in black breeches and a striped apron came in carrying a tray and – rather to their surprise – proceeded to serve them a meal, which was unexpectedly good: thin, bitter soup, pancakes, some game-bird roasted with rice, peppers and garlic, and cups of hot drink served in small metal cups.

“Maté,” said Herodsfoot, tasting it.

Yorka had never before come across plates, spoons and forks, and found them highly amusing.

While they were eating, Dido asked her quietly, “Did you
know
, Yorka – about the baby being born in this house – when you sang your song?”

Yorka nodded, but said, “Hush! Too many ghosts about. Better they don’t hear talk of baby.”

The very minute they had finished eating, the elderly man said to Lord Herodsfoot, “Sir, you will now wish to go to rest. You and the boy-servant, follow me. Isabella the housekeeper will soon show the young girls where they may sleep.”

And in a moment or two the grey-haired woman came back and sternly led Dido and Yorka in a different direction, along some more freezing stone passages, past dozens of closed doors, and up a spiral flight of stairs – up, and up, and up. I don’t like this house one bit, Dido thought. Dear knows what might be going on behind all those shut doors – prisoners, mad people who’ve been tied to their beds for twenty years, servants dying of sickness because nobody takes the trouble to care for them. And all these
stairs
! Our bedroom must be up at the top of a tower.

It was at the top of a tower. The door that Isabella opened led into a round room with three windows spaced at regular intervals in the wall. There were two small bamboo cots and two stools. A thin, black-haired woman was hurriedly throwing covers on to the cots.

“I will leave you now,” snapped Isabella, and gave some instructions to the other woman in a low voice, addressing her as Katarina. As soon as she had left, Katarina ran to Dido, caught hold of her hands, and kissed them, calling down blessings on her head.

“You saved my daughter! Oh, thanks, thanks, meninha, a thousand thanks!”

“Saved your daughter?” Dido was completely astonished. “I don’t reckon as how I saved anybody’s daughter—”

Then she thought of Yorka and the snake. But Yorka’s mother was dead . . . and this woman was not a Forest Person. She was an Angrian.

“Yes, yes, you did, you did! In the town. The Guard were after her – because she was in the street without a hood over her head – some boys stole it – but you let her into the hospital—”

“Great sakes!” said Dido, remembering. “Would they really have arrested her – just for not having a hood—?”

“Arrested her? They would have hung her up from a tree – as they do so many – if you had not helped her—”

With a shiver, Dido remembered the scene by the roadside before Tylo and she had reached the prison.

“Where is your daughter now?”

“Oh, she is safe. The nurses helped her – she hides – never mind where! But I thank you, meninha, I bless you – always, always—”

Kissing Dido’s hand again, Katarina left. As she did so she murmured conspiratorially, “Isabella ordered me to lock the door. Don Enrique and Dona Esperanza trust nobody. But I shall not lock the door. And if you should need anything in the night – only call to me. I sleep at the foot of the stair.”

“How is it going with the poor girl who is having the baby?” Dido murmured.

“Slowly. Not well. And the poor father – not here—”

After the door had closed, Yorka said, “I do not like to sleep in bed. On floor is best.”

“Suit yourself! Sleep where you like,” Dido said cheerfully. “But you better wrap yourself in that quilt. It’s powerful cold up here. My word, though! We can think ourselves lucky we don’t live in Regina town. What a place – where you get hanged for not wearing a titfer on your noddle. Swelp me!”

She went to the nearest window and looked out. The storm was still raging, gusts of wind made the tower quiver, and flashes of lightning displayed the stable-buildings and paddocks a long way below, the plantations farther off, and the true forest rising raggedly behind them.

“We’re awful high up. Even higher than a djeela tree!” Dido chuckled. “At least djeela trees don’t have ghosts in ’em – even if they do have snakes. Are there so many ghosts in this house, Yorka?”

“Some – many,” said Yorka. “All walk around this place, hoping they grab that baby soon coming—”

“Well, you better make a good magic and stop them.”

“I try.”

And Yorka sat herself thoughtfully, cross-legged, with her quilt round her shoulders.

Dido opened the window.

“Even one of them climbing snakes could hardly slither his way up here,” she said.

Something did, though, later in the night. Dido had fallen asleep as soon as she lay down. The unaccustomed luxury of a real bed – even a hard narrow cot and scanty cover – flung her into slumber at once. But after a couple of hours she suddenly woke, aware that some sound had roused her. She looked up at the window nearest her bed. The storm had blown itself out, a bright moon shone. The window was clearly outlined in brilliant white moonshine. Dido saw a hand slip over the sill – then another hand – then a head and shoulders rose up, outlined against the pearly night sky.

Yorka was instantly awake too. “Who that climb in?” she whispered.

Talisman’s voice answered. “Don’t be afraid! Dido? Are you there? I’ve come to share your sleeping-quarters!”

“Doc Tally! Saints save us! Am I glad to see
you
again!”

The doctor swung her feet neatly over the sill and settled cross-legged on the floor. A sweet powerful scent, something like that of cloves, coming from her, immediately filled the room.

Yorka said at once – “You been with Auntie Tala’aa – you Shaki Doctor? You got sticky string, mend glasses?”

“Whose glasses?”

“These here, Mylord Oklosh.”

Moving to the patch of moonlight where the doctor sat, Yorka produced the broken spectacles from her little pouch and displayed them.

“Oh yes, I can easily mend those with a bit of sticking-plaster,” Talisman said. She had brought her bag of medical equipment, slung on her back. She delved into it and found the plaster. “You are Yorka, are you not? I met your aunt last night.”

“Doc Tally,” said Dido, as the repair was being swiftly and neatly executed, “how in the name of
wonder
did you climb up to that window?”

Talisman chuckled quietly.

“Well – you see – while I was doing my medical training – I spent a couple of months in the mountains of Transylvania with a kind of Senior Lady Magician—”

“A witch?” suggested Dido.

“I suppose you might call her that. Certainly she was a healer and a seer – and she taught me various ways of getting into houses where there is a sick person – sometimes, you know, there may be nobody around to let in the doctor. Or they may not
want
the doctor to get in. In this house I think there is somebody who is in bad pain – isn’t that so?”

“On the nob, Doc,” said Dido. “There’s a poor gal somewhere downstairs having a baby – least ways she may have had it by now—”

“No, she has not,” said the doctor. “I would know that. I had better go down directly and see to her.”

“You may have a mite of trouble
getting
to her,” Dido warned. “There’s some fierce old hags in this house—”

“I daresay they will be glad enough to let me by,” said Talisman drily. She picked up her bag. Out of it rolled something hard and round. Yorka let out a squeak of astonishment.

“One headbone! From Kulara, the Place of Stones!”

She picked up the object and held it in the moonlight. It was a human skull – small, dark in colour, and plainly very old indeed. “Where you get?” she demanded.

“No, no, my love, I know what you think, but indeed I didn’t steal it from the Place of Stones,” Talisman said soothingly. “I plan to take it
back
there. Later. I will tell you. Now I must go and look after that poor girl.”

“Can we help, Doc?” said Dido.

“If I need you I will call. There’s probably a whole troop of people in there already. Yorka will hear if I call – won’t you, Yorka?”

“I hear,” said Yorka.

“While I’m down there you think helpful thoughts.”

After Talisman’s light step had died away down the stair, Dido said, “How did she know your name was Yorka? I never told her that.”

“She just been with my mother’s sister Tala’aa,” said Yorka. “Last night. Aunt Tala’aa probable help her out of jail.”

“How do you know that?”

“Scent. Aunt Tala’aa, she every day pick melanthus curd, make ointment. No one else do like that.”

“I see. I wonder how Talisman got in touch with your aunt.”

“Aunt Tala’aa know many a thing. Sisingana know she help Doctor, from the drums.”

“Can
you
hear the drums, Yorka? Do you know what they say?”

“No,” said Yorka sadly. “Hear, yes, but not know what they say. Nor Tylo can. We learn speak other tongue, so drum noise slip away from ear.”

“You mean, because you can speak to me in Shaki language, you can’t understand drum language? What a blame shame,” said Dido. “I bet you’d rather know what the drums are saying.”

“Too late,” said Yorka. “Too late now. Maybe, if Never Week come, hear drum again.”

Never Week
, Dido had learned from Tylo, was a time when everything that had gone wrong would be put right. Or the other way round.

Both girls felt too wide awake now to sleep again; instead they told each other stories. Meanwhile, Dido tried to think helpful thoughts.

Perhaps they did help.

Yorka said: “That girl down there. Now better. Girl-baby is come.”

“Oh, I’m glad,” said Dido. “The family won’t be, though, will they? Angrians don’t like girl-babies.”

“No, can’t inherit house, can’t fight in battle. Girl-baby often put out in forest for wild pig to eat.”

“
No
!” said Dido, horrified. “They don’t
really
do that, do they? Those Angrians?”

“Golly-often. Often! But not this girl, maybe. Listen.”

The two girls crouched in silence, listening, then Yorka said, “Baby find voice. Tell ghosts, go back where they came from.”

“Where is that? Where
do
they come from?”

“Back-to-front land under ground. Under forest. Where sun rise in west, shadow go frontwards. Shadow land. Ghost people come from there.”

The cry of a newborn, unnamed child, Yorka told Dido, contains terrific ghostly power. Giving a child a name, like putting a ring on its finger, ties down the spirit, reduces its force. But makes it safer, too, from the hungry spirits that cluster in search of prey whenever a baby is about to be born.

“Like tree-snake waiting for plum-bird chicks to hatch,” Yorka said. “Ah! Now listen! Doctor calling us.”

Dido could hear no call, but followed Yorka without hesitation. They ran down the winding stair and along another narrow damp passage to a kind of lobby where several maids were gathered outside a door. Isabella the housekeeper was there and sternly waved them back.

“Bad girls! How did you get out? Go away! Go to your room! This is no place for you.”

But the door opened and Talisman’s voice called from inside: “No! Let them come in. They are wanted. I need them here as witnesses.”

Passing the group of servants, who unwillingly stood back to let them through, the girls went into a large untidy room, dimly lit by a dozen candles. Three or four maidservants were running about with jugs and cloths and towels. The Senhora Esperanza Ereira stood, grim as a post, on the far side of the bed, which was the untidiest feature of the room, rumpled and crumpled, tangled with damp sheets and piled high at both ends with pillows.

Curled limply against the pillows and draped with a silk shawl was a skinny girl, utterly submerged in sleep. And, in a basket beside her on the bed, not sleeping at all, but looking alertly about, lay a tiny baby, wrapped in a shawl of djeela flowers.

Dr Talisman, standing by the bed, said: “Good. I need you two to witness the christening.”

“This is not
right.
None of this is right,” said the Senhora Esperanza sternly. “A christening should not be performed by a woman – even if she has trained as a doctor.”

She swept Talisman with a disapproving glare. Is it because she’s a doctor? wondered Dido, or because she is wearing men’s clothes? It was plain that the senhora had not, for a single moment, been deceived by the men’s clothes.

“Very well, senhora,” said Talisman calmly. “Then let your husband, the Senhor Don Enrique Ereira, perform the ceremony.”